The Silicon Review

Rise of SaaS in Indian domestic circuit

The Silicon Review07 November, 2019

The success of a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is usually accredited to the internet, pricing flexibility, business model, and the distribution model leveraging the cloud. The exponential growth of product startups was possible due to their immense capacity to innovate, disrupt existing ones, the quality of talent available, and deep tech. Currently, the Indian SaaS market is slightly lower than $1 billion, but it is growing at a rate of 36 percent. The SaaS offering is powered by other emerging technologies like Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Natural Language Processing, and IoT. Due to factors in business complexities and pricing, the consumption-based model can offer volume-based, value-based, and outcome-based freemium models.

Indian SaaS companies have understood the conditions of domestic business conditions, and they are using this privilege to provide more towards implementation and customization. This is not restricted to only India. It also goes adjacently towards Middle-East and South East Asia because overtime, India has the potential to become a global SaaS hub. The discussion on horizontal SaaS vis-à-vis vertical is very vociferous and common. There are few successful companies in horizontal front like Zoho and Freshworks. The percentage share of SaaS is still humble even though it has obvious benefits, so the government needs to make friendlier policies to nudge growth.